


Try

by DreamingStarkly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Soulbond, M/M, Season 8 Spoilers, Songfic, Warning: Mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 03:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingStarkly/pseuds/DreamingStarkly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot. Castiel relapses after he is released from Naomi's control.</p>
<p>Lyrics: "Try" by P!nk</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try

The warmth of blood dripping down his chin almost felt good in the icy air.

“Cas—” Dean rasped, both in warning and in shock. There was no answer but another marble-hard fist flying at his face. He managed to dodge, but in the process of stumbling backwards he felt the wall slam against his spine. _Shit_.

Dean caught sight of a crumpled lump over Cas’s shoulder. No blood was a good sign. So Sam was out of commission. Dean only hoped he was just knocked out.

After Naomi and the whole brainwashing mess, Castiel was a loose cannon. They didn’t know if it was the disconnect with heaven or the fact that Naomi had fiddled with Cas’s screws, or both. All they could figure out (with Cas not talking) was that as soon as Castiel had control over himself the angel attempted to fall onto his own sword. Apparently the pain of being a puppet once again to greater forces—coupled with seeing heaven fall to pieces after he played God—was too much for the guy.

The Winchesters were still trying to find the angel tablet, fearing retaliation from heaven, but now they had an angel split between worlds. The first few days he was stuck inside a holy fire circle until he calmed down a notch. Dean confiscated his sword the first night they got him back, an agreement to reduce his access to weapons while he recovered. After the angel’s personality started to return (plus the guilt), the three of them agreed it was safe to start introducing him back to reality. They managed to keep Cas in line by reducing stimuli around the angel and keeping him inside the Bat Cave. Hell, he even began to smile again. That morning, in fact. Dean was cooking some eggs and—to Castiel’s embarrassment—forcefully stuffed some eggs into the angel’s mouth. Sam cackled like a madman and, though the angel tried to hide it, Cas’s lips pulled up and his blue eyes sparked with something like fondness.

That grateful smile warmed Dean in a way he wasn’t sure he should consider too deeply.

But apparently all it took was one demon attack on the Bat Cave and the guy flipped. The demons, of course, were dead by now. Leaving one batshit-crazy angel for the Winchesters to deal with.

Castiel’s fist left a dent in the concrete as Dean shifted last minute. Within a moment the angel had Dean’s collar in a tight grip and despite his struggle the hunter felt his feet lift off of the ground.

“Snap out of it, man!” Dean spat, his hands scrabbling at Cas’s arm.

He didn’t listen, only burned in holy fury. The lights in the Bat Cave had long since burst, and the only thing illuminating the room was Castiel’s Grace, crackling within his eyes and casting eerie shadows on the walls that—if he looked hard enough—looked like a pair of wings.

Fuck, he really did not want to do this. But hell if he didn’t want to die by the hand of his...angel, either.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” Dean grunted, hoping that his friend would believe him.

The sword slid in like a surgical instrument. Castiel gasped, dropping Dean as his hand went to his shoulder. Dean stumbled, but held his ground with the angel sword out in front of him in defense. His jaw tightened when he saw the tell-tale white light leak from Cas’s shoulder.

_It’s just a wound. He can live through a shoulder scratch,_ he assured himself, swallowing nervously.

“You lied to me,” Cas growled, eyes going from the sword to Dean. “You want me gone, just like the rest of heaven.”

“I’m trying to help you, Cas,” Dean snapped, anger boiling beneath the desperation. “I _always_ have.”

Castiel looked like he was going to continue to argue, but then the light that was seeping through the wound of his shoulder grew brighter and he fell to one knee with a strangled groan. Dean instinctively stepped forward, but hesitated. The slowly growing sound of an angel’s pure Grace rang as a warning in Dean’s fragile human ears.

“Esther was right,” Castiel hissed through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“The moment I laid my hand on you in hell, I was lost.”

“Dude, if you start with this whole ‘impure soul’ shit again, I swear—”

“ _Dean_.”

Granted, the tone reeked so much of the familiarity that Dean’s defenses disappeared. Plus, the wounded angel moved more quickly than Dean anticipated. Before he could curse at his delayed response, Dean’s hand was being pressed against the light that was Castiel’s leaking Grace.

At first nothing happened (though to be honest he was expecting Cas to snap his neck). But then he felt it. And screamed.

The flames of Hell were nothing compared to this. It was a torture that Alistair himself could not concoct, because even through the physical pain there was something else. Something that would make his ears bleed and his eyes burn with the effort of keeping it at bay. It was like lightning ripping through his arm and straight to his heart.

And he saw it—the bright star that was Castiel. What was _really_ Castiel. For a moment he did not care whether he would be blind or dead by the end of this. The sight, all seventy-seven stories of him, was enough to make Dean forget everything else for a good two seconds. How the _hell_ did Cas reduce everything he was to a “multidemensional wavelength of celestial intent”? The guy wasn’t a fucking radio signal. For those two seconds, Dean saw and heard everything. He saw Castiel’s memory of pulling a rotted and blackened soul from the racks, he heard the confusion and despair that had only just begun to fade from Castiel’s mind, and he saw Cas’s fear of being abandoned and caged—from heaven, and from the Winchester boys. In those two seconds, Dean saw something else; a string that connect the two of them. A bond. And he realized how dangerous and impossible it was but—

But _damn_ , it _hurt._ Something was being tugged from deep inside of him, and now he knew why Sam and Bobby hated when Castiel reached into their chests and touched their souls. This _had_ to be different though, it was just too…too _personal_.

_Goddamnit, Cas,_ Dean managed to think beyond the surreal and painful awareness, Sex _isn’t this intimate._

And with that thought, the giant winged thing that was Castiel jerked away from his mind.

Dean blinked, and the first thing he noticed was that his sight was pretty much intact. If that wasn’t weird enough, Castiel was no longer wounded.

“The _fuck,_ ” Dean rasped, “d’you just do to me?”

“I believe I just tried to take the piece of my Grace back.”

“Ex-ex _cuse_ me?”

Castiel had the decency to look sheepish about it, at least. “For the record, I did not mean to leave it there in the first place.”

Dean gaped at the angel for a moment. “How did you not—”

“Angels do not pull souls out of hell on a regular basis,” he continued, staring pointedly at the floor. He cleared his throat. “I apologize for losing control like that. I do not wish to harm you, or Sam. Perhaps it would be better if I stay within the holy oil from now on. I should have tried—”

“Ah, sorry man but you are not just going to brush something like this off,” Dean let out a short laugh that bordered on hysteria. “What the _fuck_ did you just do to me?”

“I do not—”

“I _saw_ you. _You_. White and glowy—How am I not _blind_ right now?”

Castiel’s eyes flicked up to Dean’s. Dean had to swallow at the emotion he saw there. 

"The Grace likely protected you."

Dean nodded sharply and looked away. He squinted and bit the inside of his cheek, not sure if he wanted to continue this conversation or fall into the old habit of _okay-let’s-never-speak-of-this-again_.

“Why did you try to take it back, Cas?” he asked, staring resolutely at a spot to Castiel’s left.

The angel did not respond.

“I…was selfish. I could heal faster if I had access to my external Grace. The piece that was inside of you. I wanted to continue to…fight you.”

And kill him, probably. Dean eyed Cas warily.

“I am not going to kill you,” Cas told him, his brow furrowed. “Dean. When I got in contact with my Grace…”

“What? You magically snapped back to being Mr. Jekyll again?” Dean stated dryly.

“I remembered why I left a piece of myself behind,” Cas explained, “and why I fell for you in the first place.”

Dean’s brows shot up at Cas’s choice of words and his mouth dropped open, but he couldn’t formulate a coherent sentence at that point.

“Creation works in mysterious ways, Dean,” the angel said. “Once I touched the Grace that lives inside you, I saw that it was what keeps your soul intact. When I raised you from hell, I chose to leave it behind because I thought it was an inconsequential sacrifice. But now I see that it was foolish to think your soul was like any other. The piece of Grace is completely dependent on your soul to survive, and …so am I.”

“I’m glad that you didn’t realize we would be leashed together,” Dean quipped, finally gaining control over his faculties. “So what? It would have killed both of us if you tried to remove it?”

“Essentially, yes. That realization allowed me to ‘snap out of it’, as you said.”

Dean grunted in understanding. “That explains some things,” he muttered, considering Cas’s unexplained resurrections. At least, it was a theory. 

“When you…you seemed--uh--healed,” Dean waved vaguely. “Was it…did it…”

“Burn me? Yes. You were right to injure me, Dean. I do not blame you for it. It seems there's nothing to apologize for. I just happened to touch the Grace long enough to heal myself." Dean started to question that final statement, but Castiel abruptly changed the subject.

“Heaven and Hell need to be closed,” Castiel brought up, stepping away from Dean. “I have distracted you and Sam from your search—”

“Wait a second, Cas…”

“The angel tablet needs to be found as well.”

“Cas,” Dean said, grave and worried at the thought, “you know what that means?”

“I will be banished as well. A well-deserved fate, considering. Angels have been nothing but a burden to you.”

The room fell into silence. Dean examined Castiel’s face. The pit in his stomach grew heavier when he saw the acceptance of that fate there.

“There might be a way to keep you here,” Dean said, quickly adding, “if you want.”

Castiel stared at Dean steadily for a moment. Anxiety rose at the back of his throat. It would be the angel’s choice to want to stay on earth or return to Heaven. For once, Dean could understand that indecision. When he saw and felt Castiel, unfettered by the physical world, he saw the angel’s fear of being caged on Earth.

“I wish to stay here.”

Dean tried to keep the relief from his voice. “But…I don’t know if we can close Heaven without losing you. And even if we do, how are you going to live without—”

“I don’t know,” the angel sighed. “But I wish to…try?”

The look in Castiel’s eyes gave Dean pause. It was that familiar solidarity and surety that Dean had missed for a long time; it had been buried in fear and confusion. Somehow the stubborn angel could still see light at the end of this whole thing.

Man, if the two most important people in his life could see it—hell, maybe there was a good ending in all of this.

“Yeah,” Dean said, clasping Cas on the shoulder and squeezing it. His heart swelled in hope. He could deal with this, if Cas was willing to keep fighting. “Yeah, buddy, we should.”

  
_Funny how the heart can be deceiving_   
_More than just a couple times_   
_Why do we fall in love so easy?_   
_Even when it's not right_   


  
_Where there is desire_   
_There is gonna be a flame_   
_Where there is a flame_   
_Someone's bound to get burned_   
_But just because it burns_   
_Doesn't mean you're gonna die_   
_You've gotta get up and try, and try, and try_   



End file.
